As some of you may know, the Illinois Legislature took the monumental step of repealing the death penalty in our state. Governor Pat Quinn has the repeal on his desk but is dragging his feet on signing it into law. He has until March 12th to sign the bill. Gov. Quinn needs to hear from you if you are a resident of Illinois. Please call 217-782-0244 and ask him to sign the repeal. It is the RIGHT and HUMANE thing to do.

Matt Kelley has written affectingly about this issue:

I’ve been thinking a lot about the death penalty in Illinois. My first exposure to the issue of wrongful convictions, the issue I focus on in most of my work, was as an undergraduate at Northwestern University. In Professor David Protess’ class more than a decade ago, I heard Dennis Williams speak about his years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. I worked on possible wrongful conviction cases, and celebrated with classmates when former Gov. George Ryan cited exonerations from death row in his decision to impose a moratorium on executions.

But while Ryan’s moratorium was held up as evidence of a crumbling death penalty in the decade that followed, the state quietly refilled its death row. It’s a moratorium on executions, not on death sentences. The state has spent well over $100 million to send 15 people to the purgatory of death row under an ongoing moratorium. Let’s put aside for a moment that the death penalty is wrong; there’s no point in taxpayers bearing the enormous expense of death sentences for people who will probably never be executed. It makes sense — both pragmatically and morally — for Quinn to sign the death penalty abolition bill into law.

Kelley also has posted a short and impactful video illustrating the fact that since 1989, 31 innocent prisoners have been freed from Illinois prisons by DNA testing; 5 of these were on death row.

Please take a couple of minutes out of your day to call Gov. Quinn’s office and ask him to sign the repeal – 217-782-0244.